The gods tell that the first tool of humankind was fire. Yet Zeus, lord of Olympus, withheld it from mortals, for Prometheus had deceived him. But Prometheus, bold and defiant, stole it back—some say from the forge of Hephaestus, others from the chariot of the Sun—and placed it once more in human hands. In anger, Zeus punished both mankind and the Titan. Prometheus was chained upon the mountains of the Caucasus, in the land of Colchis, from which the tale of the Golden Fleece is said to spring. There he suffered without end: each day an eagle tore at his flesh, each night the wound was made whole, so that the torment could begin anew.
Fire became the tool that shaped the fate of mortals. It cooked their food, cleansed their instruments, and guarded them against the cold. Yet fire, which gave life, also became a weapon of ruin. Arrows tipped with flame set cities ablaze; iron cannons hurled stones great enough to rend men in pieces; and armies scorched the earth to leave only desolation behind. Few wielded such horrors more fearfully than Vlad of Wallachia. Fire has ruled humankind from the beginning—both master and servant. When the first bow was made, it was said to be the height of power, and also of cowardice. What, then, has fire brought us?
To me, only pain, only endless death—my own among them. As I write these words in my worn journal, I walk a road that leads toward death. Yet my story begins elsewhere.
On the twenty-fourth day of October, in the year seventy-nine, a fair city was turned to ash. This is the tale of Pompeii's end—and the beginning of my suffering. That morning was serene. I awoke beside my wife, Nyphora, before the sky darkened. A vast column of ash, pumice, and fire rose into the heavens and fell upon the city. Time itself seemed to falter, as though the gods wished us to endure every breath of agony. My last sight of my wife was her body, shrouded in ash and swallowed by searing winds. Would that my death had been so swift.
But it was not so. For nearly a decade, I lay entombed in stone. Then, on the first night of June, in the year eighty-eight, I awoke. My body was encased in a shell of glowing rock, which broke apart as I stirred. I had been dead ten years, yet I rose living, though all that I loved was gone. My wife stood before me, her beauty preserved and destroyed at once, her form captured forever in stone. If only I had perished by her side that day.